Saturday, March 13, 2010

McDonald's Lawsuite

“ A Nonfrivolous Suit.” New York Times. 09 March 2010: A16. Print.

This article is about a man named Frank Sutton who is suing McDonald’s for two million dollars. Sutton filed his lawsuit after dining at a local McDonald’s in Virginia. He claims that he suffered severe injuries to his lip after biting into a fried chicken sandwich that contained a “hot pocket of grease.” The hot grease caused his lip to blister, and claimed that seven months later his lip was still not completely healed. When the incident occurred a McDonald’s employee stated, “This is what happens to sandwiches when they aren’t drained properly.” The Federal district court originally dismissed the claim because they believed the Mr. Sutton did not exercise proper care while handling his food. Last month the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia reinstated his lawsuit due to evidence of a violation of Virginia’s food safety laws. Mr. Sutton’s refurbishes and assembles outdoor amusement rides for a living, and claims that he had to decline certain jobs because he thought that it would make his lip condition work. He is suing for two million dollars to cover his medical bills, loss of wages, and pain and suffering.

I think that Mr. Sutton is suing for way too much money. I don’t see why he had to decline jobs because of his lip, that is just ridiculous. The medical bills could not have been that expensive because the article didn’t mention that he had to have surgery. Obviously if you burn yourself it is going to hurt, but people have accidents way worse than this and they don’t receive two million dollars for their pain and suffering. I do think that a suit is necessary because he shouldn’t have to pay for the medical bills because it wasn’t his fault. McDonald’s should have drained the chicken properly and I believe they are at fault. He should get some money for pain and suffering but two million is too much. There was no reason for him to miss work and I hope that the court does not grant him money for that. Americans are “sue happy” and if any little thing happens they want an insane amount of money. If the courts grant Mr. Sutton the two million dollars I would be shocked. That is a lot of money just for a lip injury and I really hope that he doesn’t get it.

1 comment:

I think this man's claims are outrageous. Like stated in the post, there are way more things that are worse than a burned lip and they do not recieve two million dollars. If I was this man, I would definately be angry and want my money back and maybe alot of free meal coupons but I would not sue.

About this blog:

This blog is an ongoing discussion among members of two sections of Brookdale Community College's English 122 class, taking place in Spring 2010. This class teaches critical thinking and research writing skills, using the news stories of the day as a starting point for investigations. This blog seeks to encourage conversation about important cultural events and developments among community college students.

What each member contributes

Each class member is required to create a new post every week. This post will contain: a link to the new article (or several links, if the student is interested in seeing how the story has been handled by different news outlets), a 3-5 sentence summary of the story, and a paragraph response to the story. This paragraph should identify a controversy raised by the story. If there is no controversy, choose a different article. After identifying the controversy, one might imagine the repercussions of supporting one side over the other, connect the article's contents with other unfolding new stories, or express a viewpoint or opinion about it. These paragraphs should always use a quotation from the argument to help create a strong dialog between the author of the article and the author of the blog posting.

Each class member is also required to comment on another student's post once a week.

All posts are "labeled" with the writer's name so that each student's work can be followed in the label index.